1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a machine tool referred to herein as an impact press in that the workpiece-modifying-energy is imparted to the tooling with a substantial impact.
2. Prior Art
In a prior device energy has been obtained from a pneumatic system to drive the press ram along a path until it collides with or impacts against the tooling. One difficulty with such a construction is that its capacity was limited. For example, when used with cut-off tooling, the maximum thickness of steel that it could cut was 3/4 inch. Further, such device lacks the ability to utilize tooling which involves controlled forming, for example, compound tooling that would either blank or cut off a workpiece and form it in the same stroke. One practical reason for not building such pneumatically operated device in larger sizes is that the size of the pneumatic components needed would be so big that they would not be commercially available, and thus the cost of such a device would be so high that it would offset the advantages of the use of this type of press.